General chat room

[scarface]

Tonight, I'm going to give you a quick insight of the latest events in the United States.


Trump’s dark and threatening first speech as US president has put the world on notice

Donald J. Trump took the US presidential oath of office as rain began to fall over the Capitol building on Jan. 20 in Washington, becoming the 45th president of the world’s largest economy, and leader of the world’s most powerful democracy.



In a dark speech that promised radical changes to the way the US government interacts with other nations and its own citizens, Trump promised to bring an end to “American carnage” that has weakened the country and impoverished its people.
“We the citizens of America are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people,” Trump said, in a speech that he reportedly wrote himself. “Together we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come,” he said.
Trump spoke in front of a poncho-clad crowd that didn’t fill the National Mall, a far smaller audience than had gathered for inaugurations in the recent past, and addressed political dignitaries including former election rival Hillary Clinton, outgoing US president Barack Obama, and US Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Missing were about one-third of the sitting Congressional Democrats, who refused to attend on account of Trump’s statements about minorities, women, and veterans while on the campaign trail and concerns about foreign interference in the election.
Throughout the speech, Trump echoed a familiar, and misleading, theme from his campaignâ€"that America is in terrible shape. America’s economic recovery after the 2008 recession indeed has been uneven, and its middle class weakened. But there has been a 50% drop in crime in the US since 1991, the stock market increased 148% under Obama, and the economy is currently growing faster than it was at the start of the last four presidential terms, among other factors.
Trump, meanwhile, spoke of:
Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge. And the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
The “wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and redistributed all over the world,” Trump said, announcing “a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and hall of power: From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. For this day forward its going to be only America first, America first.”
Trump pledged that “every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families.” The speech indicates that Trump’s pledge to eliminate NAFTA, the two-decades-old trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, is not just idle talk. “We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs,” he said.
He promised to get Americans “off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor,” by following “two simple rules: buy American and hire American.”
Trump also had words for his political opponents, saying, “We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it,” in a possible reference to congressman John Lewis, whom Trump had referred to on Twitter as “all talk” and “no action,” after the civil rights leader questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s election.
Trump also pledged to “eradicate completely from the face of the earth” radical Islamic terrorism.

As the new president spoke, thousands of protesters were gathered on the outskirts of the National Mall, demonstrating against Trump’s inauguration and expected policies.

Donald Trump’s historic levels of unpopularity, charted

[scarface]

A new pollution episode is forecast for today and Sunday in Paris.


For the ones who want to visit some Parisian museum, I guess you would rather stay at home to see the photos on the forum (The visit of the museum of Orsay is probably one of my best messages: http://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=2283.msg19884#msg19884) than come to Paris. And according to the specialists, the mask is not a useful solution against nano-particles.

[humbert]

The pollution you're seeing in Paris will clear after a few days. Certain conditions of weather cause the air to become stagnant, which causes pollutants to concentrate.

[Vasudev]

No problem.

[scarface]

Today, I’m going to hold an exceptional conference about the United States called “Donald Trump’s mission? To keep the US in the fossil age”.


While Obama, has been called the first climate president, Trump wants to make America Wait Again. At least, that is what Donald Trump’s energy policy amounts to. Stop all the clocks, put the technological revolution on hold, ensure that the transition from fossil fuels to clean power is delayed for as long as possible.
Even the Jihadists of the Islamic State are laughing: they don’t understand how the Americans have been that stupid to elect him.



Trump is the president that corporate luddites have dreamed of: the man who will let them squeeze every last cent from their oil and coal reserves before they become worthless. They need him because science, technology and people’s demands for a safe and stable world have left them stranded. There is no fair fight that they can win, so their last hope lies with a government that will rig the competition.
To this end, Trump has appointed to his cabinet some of those responsible for a universal crime: inflicted not on particular nations or groups, but on everyone.

Coal miners wave signs as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Charleston


Recent research suggests that â€" if drastic action of the kind envisaged by the Paris agreement on climate change is not taken â€" ice loss in Antarctica alone could raise sea levels by a metre this century, and by 15 metres in subsequent centuries. Combine this with the melting in Greenland and the thermal expansion of sea water, and you discover that many of the world’s great cities are at existential risk.
The climatic disruption of crucial agricultural zones â€" in North and Central America, the Middle East, Africa and much of Asia â€" presents a security threat that could dwarf all others. The civil war in Syria, unless resolute policies are adopted, looks like a glimpse of a possible global future.
These are not, if the risks materialise, shifts to which we can adapt. These crises will be bigger than our capacity to respond to them. They could lead to the rapid and radical simplification of society, which means, to put it brutally, the end of civilizations and many of the people they support. If this happens, it will amount to the greatest crime ever committed. And members of Trump’s proposed cabinet are among the leading perpetrators.

In their careers so far, they have championed the fossil fuel industry while contesting the measures intended to prevent climate breakdown. They appear to have considered the need of a few exceedingly rich people to protect their foolish investments for a few more years, weighed it against the benign climatic conditions that have allowed humanity to flourish, and decided that the foolish investments are more important.








In a previous message of this topic, in  a video showing a boxing match, I had made the assumption that the black man was Maher. Unfortunately it’s not the case (it’s Mr. T!). A recently-registered user called HulksmashMaher must be very disappointed. But I found another video, and this time it could be him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyv5T-4DFFE
Is it Maher? Nobody knows.

In any case, it’s not M’sieur baboon.



In a message of humbert, who is always interesting, we had seen that some people predicted an impeachment for Trump. I don’t want to be a prophet of doom, but somebody predicted something even worse for him (and once again, it’s not m’sieur baboon)...
The only Profiler for the police of France who correctly predicted the attacks has interesting forecasts for 2017...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq3FyNFKMTE
Lilie Delahaie has premonitions since she was very young and gave an incredible testimony in "Salut les Terriens!", Notably mentioning her prediction of the recent attacks.

Last March 22 on Facebook, Lilie Delahaie wrote: "It's hard to dream it before, to feel it, to tell all my friends that I feel bad“
She then pointed out that she saw several places affected. "I think mainly: France, Belgium, Germany, Europe. One in the South of France (...) Nice, possible," she revealed. On the same day, Belgium was actually hit by terrorist attacks, just as Germany and Nice were in the following months.

Invited in Salut les Terriens! This Saturday January 21 on C8, Lilie Delahaie explained she was very young when she began to have this gift of premonition and that it is "the expression of extreme sensitivity that I learned to listen". At school, she felt the emotions and even the physical pain of her comrades, guessed who was going to phone at home and predicted an incident that was about to happen.

Crazy predictions for 2017
At the age of 8, she dreamed of a little boy sexually abused and then killed, a drama relayed in the newspapers the next day. This prediction was a "traumatic experience" for the one that today works for free to help to solve criminal investigations. She is the only "profiler" in France, but never officially because this is forbidden in France, unlike countries like the United States, China or Russia.

Her sensitivity allowed her to detect her own brain tumor that was diagnosed a year and a half later. The healing occurred only after consulting a magnetizer.
Thierry Ardisson wanted to know what was going to happen in 2017 and according to Lilie Delahaie, the new French president will be in all likelihood "new and will change everything in the long term". There will be attacks too - not surprising, unfortunately â€" of which one against...Donald Trump

[scarface]

The forum is very calm. I know that the users are watching it everyday, they don't know what to say, but they are still following the latest news, humbert's, Maher's, and my messages.

If you are getting bored, well maybe you can watch this exceptional documentary about the attacks in Paris titled « Did intelligence fail in France ?», a documentary in English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f0bM1ao1jU

[Shadow.97]

The forum is very calm. I know that the users are watching it everyday, they don't know what to say, but they are still following the latest news, humbert's, Maher's, and my messages.

If you are getting bored, well maybe you can watch this exceptional documentary about the attacks in Paris titled « Did intelligence fail in France ?», a documentary in English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f0bM1ao1jU

Honestly, I barely see a reason to use the forum anymore. Rarely new posts, and I got nothing to say that will contribute to the topic.
I'd say I go on the site once every 1 or 2 weeks currently.
However, every time I visit the forum I feel like I should delete everything on my account..

[scarface]

What do you want me to tell you, shadow.97?
Many users have lapsed into silence, including the administrator.
Maybe you already found a better forum, where you can find beautiful photos, financial news and some good friends.
If you dont know what to do, maybe you could test resident evil 7 and tell us what you think about it...Or tell us what you think about the current level of the stock markets, (if you still have stocks).
I'm currently at work, and yet Im taking some time to answer you.

[scarface]

In this topic, we have seen that shadow.97 was interested in the American election since he has been wondering whether the election of Donald Trump was rigged or not (And it's an interesting question, after all we don't know the degree of involvement of Putin in the hacking of the election: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38538002)
I hope that the photo of Tramp made him laugh anyway. Maybe the average Americans should have chosen the one on the right though: http://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=9764.msg27321#msg27321

But Shadow.97 (who comes from Sweden) must be laughing once again, after Trump said "Sweden, who would believe this?", citing non-existent terror attack
Indeed, at Florida rally Trump referred to attack in Sweden that did not happen, possibly confusing it with Sehwan in Pakistan.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/19/sweden-trump-cites-non-existent-terror-attack

[scarface]

Tonight, I'm going to talk about the latest reform of the new American President.
Then I'm going to talk about growing inequalities in the US, which are on track to widen further.



Trumpcare vs. Obamacare: Apocalypse Foretold

The Congressional Budget Office report on Trumpcare is out, and it’s devastating: 14 million people losing insurance in the first year, 24 million over time, with premiums soaring for older, lower-income Americans â€" in many cases, the very people who went strongly for President Trump. The C.B.O. thinks it would reduce the deficit, but only marginally, around $30 billion a year in a $19 trillion economy.

Then,  Let's have an assertion and two questions.

The assertion is that something like this was to be expected. The C.B.O. came in even worse on coverage than most predicted, but it was obvious that the news would be terrible because that’s what the logic of the situation told us. Obamacare imposes a mandate to induce healthy people to sign up, offers means-tested subsidies to make insurance affordable and expands Medicaid to take care of people with really low incomes. Trumpcare eliminates the mandate, slashes subsidies overall and redirects them to those who don’t need them and sharply cuts Medicaid. Of course that leads to a huge drop in coverage.

Or to put it differently, Obamacare is actually an intelligently designed system, and Republican claims that they could do much better even while slashing funding so they could cut taxes on the rich were always obvious nonsense. Trumpcare is a slapdash, incompetent piece of legislation; but even a much more competent set of people couldn’t have done better given the constraints of Republican Party ideology.

Now the questions: First, can this legislation still go through? We don' have to underestimate the cravenness of Republican “moderates,” who may posture to the center but almost always cave to the hard right when it matters. But even so, it’s hard to imagine this act of cruelty getting 50 senators. And if it can’t pass the Senate, won’t right-wing purists in the House decide to advertise their purity by voting against a bill that still falls short of free-market ideals rather than vote for Obamacare 0.5?

Second, what were Republican leaders thinking? Something like this C.B.O. score was a foregone conclusion; would it really have mattered much if it were 15 million losing insurance, not 24 million? How was this supposed to work out politically?






The history books will remember at least two things of the year 2016 in the United States. The triumph of a populist candidate in the presidential election and the fact that the Americans as a whole will never have been so rich. Quarterly national accounts tables published on Thursday (March 9th) by the Federal Reserve (Fed), the US central bank, indicate that household wealth rose 2.3% to a record $ 92,805 billion .

To obtain this figure, the Fed summed up the cash, cars, real estate, and stock market assets held by all Americans, whose debts were taken away. The total assets have thus increased by two thirds since the financial crisis of 2008, during which it had fallen to 56 000 billion.

The record high of 2016 is mainly due to the spectacular rise in stock prices in the last quarter. Wall Street grew by 8% between November 8, the date of the election of Donald Trump, and December 31. Of the $ 2,000 billion in assets that have accumulated in the last three months of the year, 36% comes from the soaring capital markets, while the rise in real estate represents 28% of this amount.

The richest 1% hold 42% of the wealth
The problem of these two drivers of wealth progression is that they do not turn at the same speed for everyone. From the moment that 80% of the stock market is held by the richest 10%, it is clear that the vast majority of Americans have missed this enrichment. As the annual study by the Gallup Institute shows, 80% of households earning more than $ 75,000 per year own shares. Under $ 30,000, the rate amounts to 23%.

Studies have attempted to gauge the impact of what economists call the "wealth effect" that when the wealth of an economic agent increases, he tends to spend more. They came to the conclusion that Americans spend between 3 and 5 cents for each additional dollar accumulated. But the concentration of capital at the top of the pyramid is such that this "wealth effect" is now much more limited than it was in the 1950s and 1960s. According to the work of Emmanuel Saez And Gabriel Zucman of the University of Berkeley (California), the richest 1% in the United States held in 2012 (latest available statistics) 42% of the country's wealth.

Moreover, an article published in December 2016 by the two economists and co-signed with Thomas Piketty, showed that more than half of the wealth of the richest 1% of the population comes from real estate and the stock market. At the other end of the spectrum, for the 90% least well off, the proportion drops to 20%, the core of which is invested in pension funds for retirement.

Illustration of the widening of inequalities: the gap between household wealth and average income has never been greater. The first is now 6.5 times higher than the second, a level higher than that reached at the top of the 2007 housing bubble. While overall wealth has steadily increased, revenues have practically made no progress.

This explains why most of the fruits of the economic recovery were concentrated in a few hands. "From 1980 to 2014, average income per adult rose by 61% in the United States," said Saez, Zucman and Piketty. However, the average income before tax of the 50% who earned the least stagnated at around $ 16,000 per adult, after adjusting for the effects of inflation. On the other hand, incomes at the top of the pyramid have literally soared, rising by 121% for the richest 10%, by 205% for the richest 1%, and by 636% for the richest 0.001%.

Moreover, in 1980 an adult among the richest 1% earned 27 times more than an adult belonging to the 50% less rich. Today the ratio has increased to 81. "This ratio of 1 to 81 is similar to the gap between the average income in the United States and the average income in the poorest countries of the world, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Burundi," economists said.

The United States has never been so rich, but at the same time, the American society has rarely been so unequal. This is one of the keys to understanding the election of a populist candidate for president. But for the moment, it is the richest who are taking advantage of it, and it is not the least of the paradoxes.